Results: SiSoftware Sandra

This top-end XPS One's Core i7-3770S has a huge advantage in Sandra Arithmetic, though even the older notebook's Core i7-3610QM beats the Core i5-equipped desktops.

The XPS One 17" falls behind a bit in Sandra's Cryptography, which we know to be indicative of a memory bandwidth disadvantage since AES-NI feeds the processor instructions as fast as they can be loaded from RAM.

And as suspected, our bandwidth numbers are slightly lower than the platforms we're using to compare. That raises the question why so many SO-DIMM-equipped machines employ DDR3-1600 CAS 11, when DDR3-1600 CAS 9 is really quite economical now?

A very important and crucial point: Touch screens are doomed to fail as users will find out soon that their arm, wrist and hand will get tired and sore soon as they keep extending their arms to use this pain producing gadget.Who ever invented the desktop touch monitor should be shot.

JohnUSAA very important and crucial point: Touch screens are doomed to fail as users will find out soon that their arm, wrist and hand will get tired and sore soon as they keep extending their arms to use this pain producing gadget.Who ever invented the desktop touch monitor should be shot.

There's probably some use for a touchscreen-desktop monitor productivity-wise.

Wow for $2600 and change you could build a top of the line computer and buy a 27" IPS Dell screen - they frequently go on sale for around $500 - $550. That computer would be somewhere around five times faster than this Dell touch screen and it would have first-class components.

Really there is no comparison. Windows 8 and a touch screen are not worth the trade off. Building a high-end system that blows the Dell away is by far the superior choice.

A very important and crucial point: Touch screens are doomed to fail as users will find out soon that their arm, wrist and hand will get tired and sore soon as they keep extending their arms to use this pain producing gadget.Who ever invented the desktop touch monitor should be shot.

JohnUSAA very important and crucial point: Touch screens are doomed to fail as users will find out soon that their arm, wrist and hand will get tired and sore soon as they keep extending their arms to use this pain producing gadget.Who ever invented the desktop touch monitor should be shot.

There's probably some use for a touchscreen-desktop monitor productivity-wise.

The alternate review is a great Value-addition to this article.Its important to get a informal, subjective review from a general user. Numbers are very important, but they dont tell the complete picture.

Touchscreens on desktops will never go mainstream. It's just a fad they're trying to push, like 3D was a few years back. People don't like to have to sit close to screens and use their arms to control them - that's why TVs have remotes. Touchscreens on desktops solve nothing and improve nothing. Sure it's more intuitive to touch something than point and click, but anyone who can't figure out pointing and clicking won't get much out of using a computer anyway.Touchscreens on laptops might suck less as a concept, but laptop screens suck by design because they're so small.

JohnUSAA very important and crucial point: Touch screens are doomed to fail as users will find out soon that their arm, wrist and hand will get tired and sore soon as they keep extending their arms to use this pain producing gadget.Who ever invented the desktop touch monitor should be shot.

I find these all-in-one touch screens helpful for kiosks, data centers, production, (kitchen - maybe :P), POS, as a replacement for other tools such as keyboards and mouse - simply for convenience. But yes, not a tool to be used for 8hours work in-front of a computer. And if you would have this for those application I mentioned, this is too damn expensive and ludicrous!

Every time Tom's (or any other site for that matter) posts anything about Windows 8 or touch-screen PC's you always, ALWAYS, get people who instantly denounce such products almost as if they are "of the devil himself". As a power user, or anyone who actually comes to Tom's to read "tech-y" articles - Yes, Windows 8 is probably not for you. That's fine and dandy. But I get so tired of people just instantly proclaiming Windows 8 a failure because of the changes that Microsoft has made to it. While no, it does not have a start button, anyone who has used it for more than a day can tell you that it doesn't really matter. I tap the Windows key and start typing what I want and Windows finds it for me. The start screen gives me a quick overview of important applications without having to actually OPEN the application to find the information. I love my ASUS Vivo Tablet (Windows RT), and I find myself using that more often than my laptop or desktop when I just want to look something up or read and respond to an email.

Case in point: I set my girlfriend up with what I thought was a really nice setup. A touch screen AIO in her spare room. It had (read: HAD) Windows 7 on it. She was constantly complaining about how she hated it when it either did not register her touches or the limited gestures that I so painfully set up. She went months without even turning the damn thing on. She complained that she couldn't do anything with it because it was just too hard to get a simple task done.Windows 8 comes out last October and I figure I'd give it a shot and if she still didn't like it, I'd have an extra computer in my man cave for something. I can't keep her off the thing. She absolutely loves it. She loves the live tiles, how it recognizes her gestures, how easy it is to navigate. I could go on... What I wish people would realize is that Windows 8, while it will probably not be as widely accepted as our beloved Windows 7, it is still a pretty solid step forward. If you are a power user (myself included) you will probably never install W8 on your desktop or even your laptop. But it is a fantastic piece of software that can change how people use computers.

How ***** think: "There's a touch screen so it MUST be the ONLY interface which I must therefore use CONSTANTLY for everything. My keyboard and mouse will, for some inexplicable reason, become useless, and my arms will get tired from so much reaching.

How normal people think: Cool, a touch screen. Now I have more options. Perhaps one day I'll find an application in which being able to manipulate up to 10 different points simultaneously will be much more practical and time-saving than editing coordinates one at a time.

Wow for $2600 and change you could build a top of the line computer and buy a 27" IPS Dell screen - they frequently go on sale for around $500 - $550. That computer would be somewhere around five times faster than this Dell touch screen and it would have first-class components.

Really there is no comparison. Windows 8 and a touch screen are not worth the trade off. Building a high-end system that blows the Dell away is by far the superior choice.

We see the future of desktops in movies like Iron Man where there will be a touch interface. However, what we do not see in Iron Man is the input system of these computers which for now will still require a keyboard and mouse. I am neglecting to include "Jarvis" on purpose because I think that personal computers with AI are still a ways away for now.

And then there's the mess one's fingers will make on a touch screen. I can't see desktop usersbeing happy with ever-present finger prints, etc. When I get off a bus, I see people sitting usingtheir smart phones; my first thought is, how can they live with such a filthy screen?? Some ofthem look as though they've been dipped in a sewer...

thinslicedbreadBut I get so tired of people just instantly proclaiming Windows 8 a failure because of the changes that Microsoft has made to it.

No, we predicted it would be a failure because of the changes Microsoft made to it.

We're proclaiming it a failure because it has a 30% slower adoption rate than Vista had, despite being released just before the Xmas shopping season.

Fans of Windows 8 and Metro need to recognize they're the minority. More than 96% of PC users are not using Windows 8, and the reason is not steep hardware requirements, or bugs, or the unavailability of drivers, but the stupid touch centric interface that most users don't want anywhere near their PCs - hence the 3.3% market share for Windows 8.